My sincere thanks to all the people through the years who preserved and passed along these wonderful letters to our generation. Somewhere out there, are a few more of these letters. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the owners would submit them?

The original letters were written in a beautiful script, but totally without punctuation. Capital letters were used at random. All spelling was phonetic, i.e. they spelled by the sound of the word. These letters were most difficult to transcribe, therefore I have taken license to add punctuation, capitol letters and other necessary changes to make reading easier.

The authors of these letters, for the most part, lived in the same community, as well as the characters mentioned. The community is still known as the Bond Community and there was no public school until Bond Academy was built in 1889. I assume that the Poor Schools were all the education that was available prior to the Civil War.                               

Charlotte Collins Bond